A year ago, wide receiver Brandin Cooks was preparing to play for the Patriots in the Super Bowl. This year, he's preparing to play against the Patriots for the Los Angeles Rams.
FOXBORO – There is a saying often heard at Gillette Stadium.
“Practice execution,” it is said, “becomes game reality.”
It’s been uttered by the head coach. It’s been uttered by the team’s players.
On the night of Feb. 3 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, what was once practice execution will become game reality.
After playing for the Patriots in Super Bowl LII last season, wide receiver Brandin Cooks will be playing against them as member of the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII.
Thus, just as they did at practice a year ago, members of the Patriots secondary will face the task of lining up across the line of scrimmage from Cooks on the game’s biggest stage.
“You know him a little bit personnel-wise, but you’re still got to dive into the film, see how they’re using him,” Patriots safety Devin McCourty said. “How we used him isn’t necessarily the same or how he plays on the Rams. It definitely helps when you’ve played against a guy multiple times, it’s the same thing when you’ve played against a guy that’s in your division for years. You know him personally as far as how they run routes and what they might not like, you know different things like that. But you’ve still got to go and compete against him and try to make it tough.
“We know what Cooks brings,” McCourty continued. “He’s a fast guy, whether that’s catching passes, going horizontally and getting vertical or he’s getting vertical down the field. He’s a guy that we have to know where he’s at. We had to do that in practice a lot, too, when he first got here of knowing where he’s at and recognizing his speed and what he can do.”
In only his fifth season in the NFL, the 5-foot-10, 183-pound Cooks has already done it for three different teams.
A first-round pick (20th overall) of the New Orleans Saints out of Oregon State in the 2014 draft, Cooks is the first player in league history to record three straight 1,000-yard receiving seasons.
“He’s on his third team and no matter where he’s at he’s a walking 1,000 yards,” cornerback Jason McCourty said Friday. “A guy that’s extremely explosive, can get down the field but can also run intermediate routes, catch-and-run plays, catching the ball, getting up field, breaking tackles, he’s a guy that no matter what on each and every play you have to know where he’s at because he can score from anywhere on the field.”
Of course, the accomplishment unto itself can be viewed as both a positive and a negative.
On the one hand, sure, Cook has produced wherever he’s played. On the other hand, why has he played for three teams in five seasons?
Acquired from the Saints by the Patriots in 2017 in a trade that saw them part with a first-round draft choice, Cooks was one and done in New England. Unwilling to pay the money he would have commanded this year on the free-agent market, the Patriots shipped Cooks to L.A. (the Rams subsequently signed him to a five-year, $81 million contract extension) for a first-round draft pick they used to select Isaiah Wynn, the offensive lineman from Georgia who missed all of this season with a torn Achilles.
Through five seasons, Cooks has caught 360 passes for 5,147 yards and 32 touchdowns, 80 for 1,204 yards and five TDs this year in finishing second on the Rams in all of those departments to fellow wide receiver Robert Woods (86 receptions for 1,219 yards and six TDs). While Woods has hauled in 12 passes for 102 yards in the Rams’ two postseason games this year, Cooks had made 11 catches for a team-leading 172 yards.
In his one season in New England, Cooks caught 65 passes for 1,082 yards and seven touchdowns to finish second on the team to tight end Rob Gronkowski (69 receptions for 1,084 yards and eight TDs) in all three departments. He made 10 catches for 155 yards in their three postseason games but was knocked out of the Patriots’ 41-33 loss to Philadelphia in the Super Bowl in the second quarter with a concussion he suffered after taking a hard hit from Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins.